The Grand Plan, heralded and envied across continents, had not just uplifted Sharath Virayan Darsha's empire but eclipsed its neighbors in might, mind, and modernity. The few empires that dared mimic it—without the vision, will, or resources—faltered spectacularly. Humiliated and weakened, they clutched their pride tighter than their purses and nurtured a festering grudge.
One by one, these fractured powers banded together in desperation. The flames of envy fueled their drums of war. They launched strikes on Sharath's empire, expecting to catch the kingdom off guard.
They were wrong.
The wars that followed were fierce, harrowing, and blood-soaked. Though Sharath's forces repelled them with superior innovation and strategy, the cost was undeniable. Cities burned, crops wilted, and, worst of all, his citizens—his people—bled. The sight of a mother shielding her child from fire raining from foreign catapults, the cry of a boy clutching his dying father in the fields outside Vayanora, these haunted Sharath more than any battle map or loss ledger ever could.
He sat alone in the war chamber, surrounded by silent walls and stifled sobs of the wounded empire.
And in that stillness, a quote echoed.
> "When both hold knives, peace is a choice. But when one holds a knife and the other an open hand, the knife-holder decides life or death."
His grandfather-in-law had spoken those words years ago, with whiskey in hand and fire in his eyes. Sharath had dismissed it then, deeming it the philosophy of tyrants.
But now?
Now, the knife had slashed through too many open hands.
He stood and whispered to the air, as if the spirits of the fallen were listening:
> "Then let us not hold knives. Let us hold guns."
Thus was born the **First Gun of the World**.
Not forged of crude powder and iron, but of magic-infused alloys, precision engineering, and power extracted from runes, hydrokinesis, and stored arc-light. A marvel. A terror. A turning point.
As word spread that the Lord of Innovation had turned to weapons, kingdoms trembled. Those still plotting resistance buckled under fear. His enemies tried to rally, but how could swords clash with thunder? How could spears pierce through a storm?
Sharath deployed the new weapons not for conquest but as proof.
He demonstrated their might in desolate wastelands, where abandoned outposts crumbled under their blasts. He let envoys from rival kingdoms watch.
And kingdoms fell—not to war, but to **awe**.
Peace, once bartered, was now demanded. Treaties were signed in haste. Old empires broke into dozens of petty kingdoms, each pledging allegiance or neutrality.
And yet, in the quiet of his chambers, Sharath wept. Not for the fallen foes, but for what it took to protect his dream.
The gun had become the knife. And the man who once shunned power, now held the power to reshape the world.
History would call it **The Thunder Revolution.**
Sharath Virayan Darsha would call it a necessary sin.